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Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

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Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#101

Post by gingabriska »

docker_up wrote: post #97
gingabriska wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Returning money would create inflation for acquiring future cash cows (think : firebase) Imagine, if Google returned money then investor gets the money and now they try to invest it somewhere else, highly likely, these guys will go after companies which Google want to buy out. Why make it expensive for yourself to buy your threats? The idea is that investment opportunities are shrinking, more money in market for limi…

Google has already created inflation from their stock price. The houses in the Bay Area have doubled in 5 years precisely because FANG engineers have had their shares skyrocket 6-10x, so they buy multiple houses.

I am not talking about this kind of inflation.

I am talking specifically about inflation for purchasing future cash cows.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#102

Post by specialist »

bena wrote: post #86
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it speaks to his motive is exactly what makes it fallacious. People’s motive’s have nothing to do with whether or not what they are saying is true or false. They are either speaking truth or not. Motives can explain WHY they are saying something untrue. But not IF what they are saying is untrue. You are saying that Thiel has a reason to lie. But you aren’t addressing whether or not he is actually lying.…

His motive is fair game when we're discussing his credibility as a source or information.

Nor should people be awarded karma for being right for the wrong reasons.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#103

Post by vasco »

zhoujianfu wrote: post #87
ralph84 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you get to Google or Apple scale, you’re essentially a government and run into the same problems with central planning that governments do. It’s absolutely the right move to return the money to shareholders and let them reallocate it to more economically promising endeavors. That doesn’t make a statement about innovation stagnation on the whole, it just reflects the reality of diminishing returns to scale.

This just struck me as the same reason UBI is a great policy for governments. Just distribute the cash people, you’re too big to allocate it well!

That's just an argument for lowering taxes.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#104

Post by petra »

nostrademons wrote: post #42
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t start one company. I would take a leaf out of Y Combinator’s book, and start funding lots a small startups, as well as advising them. I’d would attempt at investing in such a way that I create an ecosystem of companies that can learn from each other and support each other. I’d focus on climate resilience. Lots of current practices will be disrupted by changes we are already seeing. Easy? Probably not, but…

Google's done that repeatedly with Google Labs, GMail Labs, Google X, Area 120, department-internal projects like Search Demo Days, 20% time, Google Ventures, giving high-performing employees a charter to work on whatever they want for a couple quarters, etc. It never seems to work, and it never seems to work for the reasons outlined in The Innovator's Dilemma. Big companies are held hostage by their customers. A new…

Google seem to solve that by spinning-out while keeping significant(probably) equity.

What's wrong with that ?

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#105

Post by Shounak »

dmix wrote: post #22
ralph84 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you get to Google or Apple scale, you’re essentially a government and run into the same problems with central planning that governments do. It’s absolutely the right move to return the money to shareholders and let them reallocate it to more economically promising endeavors. That doesn’t make a statement about innovation stagnation on the whole, it just reflects the reality of diminishing returns to scale.

Why not buy some companies and get some proper entrepreneurs back into the mix of management? I can't remember any recent major Google acquisitions. No mega company really has to have internal innovation. And I doubt the pretend internal startups ala skunkswork with an unlimited budget and extensive runways are a real replacement for innovation popping out of the marketplace among the bodies of a hundred other failed…

Notably they also recently acquired Looker

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#106

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

bena wrote: post #86
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it speaks to his motive is exactly what makes it fallacious. People’s motive’s have nothing to do with whether or not what they are saying is true or false. They are either speaking truth or not. Motives can explain WHY they are saying something untrue. But not IF what they are saying is untrue. You are saying that Thiel has a reason to lie. But you aren’t addressing whether or not he is actually lying.…

His motive is fair game when we're discussing his credibility as a source or information.

Of course you can discuss his motive. But it is a logical fallacy to use his motive to disprove his statement. The person I responded to said that since he showed motive, his ad hom attack wasn’t fallacious.

If someone without his proposed motives had made the same statement, the statement wouldn’t be more or less true.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#107

Post by mrep »

MegaButts wrote: post #91
sharcerer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google invests a lot. Look at CapitalG, GV etc. And now within Google itself, 2 projects which I think are aiming to become platforms: Stadia, Fuschia. Personally, I have been disappointed with Google in the AR front. Haven't heard much about investments/ acquisitions. OTOH, Apple has been acquihiring small teams, investing in microLEDs etc. Though, overall Alphabet's investments are much diverse.

You think Stadia is viable considering the lag? It's obviously worthless for competitive or even serious gamers. I am skeptical it will be enticing for casual gamers.

I played 30 hours of assassins creed on stadia during the beta and I didn't notice any lag, so yes.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#108

Post by izzydata »

beefalo wrote: post #93
MegaButts wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Stadia is viable considering the lag? It's obviously worthless for competitive or even serious gamers. I am skeptical it will be enticing for casual gamers.

I think it will be really enticing for people that want to play sports games but don't want to invest in a console. Those customers are also not going to be the ones concerned about latency.

It has no real advantages to buying a console because you still have to buy the games individually as they explained. It is no different than financing a gaming console except you could eventually pay it off unlike Stadia.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#109

Post by xur17 »

andrekandre wrote: post #98
johannes1234321 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying the stock is a way for distributing money to their share holders. Similar to a dividend.

it would be interesting if companies that size would distribute more to their employees one fantasy calculation i do a lot is google-profits / total-google-employees or apple-profits / total-apple-employees and you get something like half a million dollars a year (60 billion dollars of profit divided by 132,000 apple employees for example) in the above scenario, work a few years at a company like google or apple and…

Isn't that already what is happening at FAANG companies? According to levels.fyi, a senior developer at Facebook and Google is at ~$360k in total comp. After working 5 or 10 years, you could easily have $1M in savings (perhaps a bit more challenging given the cost of living where these companies are located, but still possible).

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#110

Post by jonny_eh »

vasco wrote: post #103
zhoujianfu wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just struck me as the same reason UBI is a great policy for governments. Just distribute the cash people, you’re too big to allocate it well!

That's just an argument for lowering taxes.

No, that's assuming that the free market is best at distributing wealth. Evenly distributing at least some of the money isn't the same as "spending" it.
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